The return of passion

One expert has a surprising theory on why lust often fades when a couple commits—and how you can get it back.

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Whether I’m on an airplane, at a party or in the bleachers at a baseball game, I always have a rapt audience when I mention that I’m a couples’ therapist working on a book about how to keep passion alive. I regularly meet couples who describe their relationships as intimate and loving yet sexually dull. What they miss is not sex the act; they miss the feeling of connection, playfulness and renewal that sex allows them. They miss erotic vitality. Some are sheepish about it; others are desperate, dejected, enraged or resigned. But they all agree that they’ve experienced a genuine loss.

Consider my client Adele. (Her story and the stories of other clients I’ll recount here are authentic and almost verbatim, but I’ve masked their identities.) She is a 38-year-old lawyer in private practice who has been married to Alan for seven years. They have a daughter, Emilia, who is 5.

Although Adele has everything she ever dreamed of, she has come to see me because she feels like there’s something missing from her relationship. “Eighty percent of the time I’m happy with Alan,” Adele explains. “He doesn’t say certain things, he doesn’t gush, but he’s a really nice guy. I feel fortunate. We’re healthy; we have enough money; we don’t have to dodge bullets on the way home from work. I know how bad it can be out there. So what is it I want?”

She then answers her own question: “You know that feeling you have in the beginning, the butterflies in your stomach, the physical passion?” Adele continues. “I miss that.” After more than 20 years counseling couples, I have heard many people echo this complaint. “The realistic part of me knows that insecurity was a big part of that excitement. When we were dating and the phone rang, it was exciting because I didn’t know if it would be him,” Adele recalls. “Now when he travels, I tell him not to call me—I don’t want to be woken up. I don’t want insecurity, but I’d like to recapture some of that excitement. I’m not talking only about sex. I want to be appreciated as a woman. Not as a mother, not as a wife, not as a companion. And I want to appreciate him as a man.”

Adele, in her breathless riff, vividly captures the tension between the comfort of committed love and the muting effect this comfort has on eroticism. Familiarity is indeed reassuring and brings with it a sense of security that Adele would never dream of giving up. At the same time, she wants to experience the vitality and excitement that she and Alan both say they felt in the beginning. She wants to have both the coziness and the edge, and she wants them both with her husband.

Of course, women are chagrined to discover that the very stability, closeness and comfort they crave are exactly what douse the fireworks. Contrary to what many of us have come to believe, more intimacy doesn’t always make for more or better sex. In fact, increased intimacy is often accompanied by decreased desire. Why? Because love flourishes in an atmosphere of proximity, mutuality and equality. We care about those we love, worry about them and feel responsible for them, as we should, and they for us. But the caring, protective elements that foster love often block the unself-consciousness and selfishness that are necessary to fuel erotic pleasure.

Too intimate for sex, not too tired

In their day-to-day life, modern, committed couples have a long list of sexual alibis that claim to explain the death of eros. They are too busy, too stressed and too tired for sex. Yes, our lives are more chaotic than they should be. But I think there’s more to the story, and what’s going on beneath the surface is what I try to understand with my clients. In focusing exclusively on a couple’s sexual relations, we address only superficially the malaise many are feeling, so I try not to reduce sex to the same old number crunch: how often, how long did it last and how many orgasms took place. That approach glosses over the personal experience of sex and instead focuses on an objective list of criteria. I prefer to home in on sexual feeling rather than sexual functioning. I encourage my patients to introduce less quantifiable aspects of the erotic universe into their equations: imagination, playfulness, artistry, fantasy and sensuality. We look at what happened to these things as well.

Eventually, after the dissatisfied lamentations about the kids, the house and the lack of time trail off, I begin to hear about more complex obstacles: I see people who are such good friends, they cannot sustain being lovers. I see lovers who hold so tenaciously to the idea that sex must be spontaneous that they never have it at all. I see couples who view seduction as too much work, something they shouldn’t have to do now that they’re monogamous. I see power struggles that escalate into erotic stalemates, where the only power one member of the couple wields is refusal. I see wives who would rather carry the label of low sexual desire than explain to their husbands that foreplay needs to last more than five minutes. I see new parents who are so consumed by their children that they don’t remember to close their bedroom door once in a while. In short, this impasse can take many forms, and these are specific to each couple. What the couples I see have in common is that they’re feeling the lack of a critical part of their relationship that they used to take great pleasure in.

The myth of “The One”

Part of the problem is in our expectations of marriage. We come to marriage today with high hopes of satisfaction on many different levels. Not so long ago, the desire to feel passionate about one’s husband or wife after years together was considered a contradiction. Historically, these two realms of life have been organized separately—marriage on one side and passion somewhere else, if anywhere at all.

Today we turn to one person to deliver what an entire village—friends, community, extended family—once did. We expect our partner to be the primary supplier for our emotional connections, to provide a bulwark against the problems of everyday life. We seek security, as we always have, but now we also want our partner to love us, cherish us and excite us. Sexual fulfillment is considered a key ingredient to a happy marriage, and when we no longer have it we feel cheated. Yet, as we’ve seen, it’s often hard to generate lust with the same person we look to for comfort and stability.

That’s because safety and adventure are two fundamentally separate needs that tend to pull us in different directions. Stability, understanding and compassion are the handmaidens of a close, harmonious relationship, whereas eroticism thrives on novelty, mystery and the unexpected. Adele, for example, knows familiarity flattens desire, but she is not prepared for unpredictability to reign over her marriage, either.

What Adele and those in her situation must realize is that sexual excitement doesn’t play by the rules of good citizenship. It is often politically incorrect. The fuel of our fantasies can be different from what propels our relationships emotionally. As Adele once said, “I’m really drawn to arrogant men, but I never would have married one. Can you imagine living every day with someone who thinks he’s better than everyone else? I’ve had my share of bad boys. The sex might be hot, but the lack of emotional safety leaves something to be desired.”

Adele’s analysis is not unusual. Many people find it difficult to let go sexually with someone they love, worry about and feel responsible for, but easier with someone they know they couldn’t care about long-term and whose judgment they do not fear. We bring to our intimate erotic encounters a lifetime of injunctions against selfishness in love, but sexual desire requires a degree of selfishness, autonomy and separateness. Sex is an act of giving and taking, pleasing the other and pleasing oneself. Unless we find a way to reconcile generosity and self-centeredness, our relationship becomes weighed down with anti-aphrodisiacs such as pressure, guilt and worry.

Another pair of clients, Aidan and Sasha, have been married for 10 years. Both in their mid-30s, they came to their marriage as sexual nomads, with memorable histories of exploration. “I don’t understand what’s happened to us,” Aidan tells me. “When I was single, I was into everything, and so was Sasha. Now it’s the missionary position once a week, if we’re lucky.” Sasha adds, “I feel like Carol Brady.”

Perhaps that’s because, like many of us, Aidan and Sasha are afraid to be erotically adventurous with the person they depend on for so much and whose opinion is paramount. Inviting someone into the recesses of our erotic mind is indeed dangerous; by opening ourselves to our partner, we make ourselves vulnerable to judgment. We’d rather edit ourselves, maintaining a tightly negotiated, boredom-assured, acceptable erotic script, than risk emotional injury.

The closeness conundrum

Sasha and Aidan are close—of that there is no doubt. But just as distance precludes connection, completely merging can kill desire between people who love each other. When we take away the separateness of two distinct individuals, there is no bridge to walk on, no one to visit on the other side. Desire needs space, and space is necessary for connection. This is the paradox of intimacy and sex. Yet the idea of introducing emotional space and excitement into their loving relationship makes Sasha and Aidan anxious.

So how do we reconcile the need for safety and predictability with the wish to experience passion, transcendence and awe? We must find ways to welcome the unknown, to recognize the mystery of the person we love. Excitement is interwoven with uncertainty, with our willingness to acknowledge that we never really know our partner. Not after two weeks, not after 5 years, not even after 20. We all have private thoughts, unshared feelings, unmet needs. This creates tension that leaves us feeling vulnerable, but it also fuels desire. I tell my patients, if you’re open to it, you needn’t always have “safe sex,” at least from an emotional point of view.

My patient Jenny was able to recognize that there is much she doesn’t know about her partner, and she found it refreshing, exciting. “Manuel was talking with some friends at a party, and I looked at him and thought, He’s so attractive. It was weird, like an out-of-body experience. For a moment there, I forgot that he’s my husband and a real pain in the ass—obnoxious, stubborn; that he annoys me; that he leaves his clothes all over the floor. At that moment, I saw him as if I didn’t know all that, and I was drawn to him. He’s very smart, and he has this soothing, sexy way about him. I wasn’t thinking about when we bicker in the morning because I’m running late. I was away from all that inane stuff. I just really saw him.” In looking at Manuel out of the context of their marriage—switching from a zoom lens to a wide-angle—Jenny noticed his otherness, which heightened her attraction to him. She saw him as a man and was able to transform the familiar into the unknown after years together.

I believe most of us can learn to see our partners this way. They never fully belong to us, nor can we know everything about them. As soon as we can begin to acknowledge that, sustained desire becomes a possibility. He’s not “your husband,” for instance, but “Mike, who has a genius for seeing the absurd in the tragic and who can turn a six-hour airport delay into a second childhood.” Refocusing the way we look at our partner helps revive a sense of imagination in the bedroom.

I also try to help my clients understand what it is they want sex to provide. Release? Connection? Intensity? Freedom? Rebellion? I ask them what they are most afraid of. Together, we explore the architecture of each partner’s sexuality, and what his or her fantasies are. Exposing fantasies helps us understand what we’re seeking, not only sexually but emotionally. Revealing these to someone you’re so close with is scary. But taking that risk can pay off in greater excitement and, ultimately, greater understanding of one another.

Of course, all the insight and understanding in the world won’t make a dent if you never set aside any time for yourselves as a couple. It can be a weekly date, a weekend away or even a half hour extra in the car alone: time when you are free to experience pleasure together, any pleasure. Erotic life must be cordoned off from daily life and treated with reverence. This is especially true for families with young children, for which time and privacy are at a premium. It’s not that the erotic pulse is gone, just that it has been redirected to the kids. The latest in kids’ fashion for them, but college sweats for mom. Languorous cuddling with the kids while the grown-ups survive on a diet of quick pecks. In this environment, playfulness and novelty are channeled to the children, to the detriment of the parents’ sexuality.

Finding ways to bring some of the erotic energy back to your relationship involves planning. But rather than viewing it as unspontaneous, look at it this way: Planning implies intentionality, and intentionality conveys value. When you plan for sex, what you’re really doing is affirming your erotic bond. I’m not saying that you have to plan intercourse, only suggesting that you cultivate an erotic space where anything can happen. If you do, I suspect you’ll find that sex often does. Spontaneity is a fabulous idea, but in an ongoing relationship, whatever is going to “just happen” already has. I aim to help my clients become comfortable with sexuality as a consciously acknowledged, welcomed part of life.

We also need to adjust our expectations of marriage and understand that reconciling the domestic and the erotic is a delicate balancing act that we achieve intermittently at best. Desire ebbs and flows, but autonomy and space, which fuel the fires of desire, are essential. (See “Five Ways to Keep the Lust Alive” for how to put some distance into your relationship.) Marriage can’t satisfy all our needs. We may live 1,000 miles from our families and have trouble keeping up with our childhood friends, but we can’t turn to our partners for everything that is missing. Cultivating eroticism means resisting the message that passion is for teenagers and the immature. Complaining of sexual boredom is easy and conventional. Nurturing eroticism in the home is an act of open defiance.

Excerpted from Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic by Esther Perel. Copyright (c) 2006 by Esther Perel (HarperCollins).